Traize, I really like your post, really interesting.
I may be wrong, but it seems to me that the topic has somehow drifted toward something that goes slightly over the edge.
If you agree, after Australia, England, Indonesia, let me speak a bit about the French way of doing things (not
necessarily the best one). France has a strong muslim minority (and they usually are really far from the extremists some
people here think muslims are).
I'm not American. I'm French. And I try to be catholic (the quiet kind who think that the good samaritan story
is far from being understood by most people). Now you know what you are dealing with in this post.
France is more or less a laic country. I mean that up until 1905 the church had ties with the state, but since then
there is a separation between the state and the church. In the French vocabulary, it broadly means that you can pray to
whoever you want, the Big Red Fish in the Celestial Aquarium if you want, so long as you don't step on other
people's right to live freely. Your freedom stops where you neighbor's freedom starts.
As for the French administration (an English writer once nicknamed it 'the elephant' to reflect how easy it is
to cope with its logic...), laicity means that there is no state religion. It means that the state can't recognize
any religion as better than another, or even as true. The state has no religion, therefore the people working for it
must show no religious sign in their work (after that, they do what they want). The same logic is applied to public
schools.
In French public schools, people (teachers and students) may bear a small cross dangling from a chain around their neck,
or a hamsa pendant if they want, so long as it is personel and can't be seen as a way to somehow 'impose'
your opinions on other people.
Quite often, in high schools and suchlike, you may find a place where students can come and speak about religious stuff
and suchlike. They are free to do so there, but once again the rule is 'respect other people's opinion or get
out.' However, there is no specific official prayer room.
The policy of 'no evident religious signs' other than small pendants and suchlike does not always goes
smoothly. More or less every year, there are some problems at the beggining of the year when muslim girls come with a
chador on the head... Usually it leads to news headlines for a few days then the matter is forgotten due to more
interesting news. Up until a couple of years ago, this also lead to long discussions between the school board and the
students. Now, a law sets the rules more clearly, even though there still are some weird cases showing up here and
then.
If you want to mix religion and education, you can go to private schools. Even in semi-private schools, if a student
feels offended by some religion or politics stuff in the school he can ask for the removal of the offending stuff. In
fully private schools, you do as you please, so long as the students learn the basics. I read recently that a brand new
muslim private high school is about to open here. It's going to be the first one in France. And even there the
religious stuff won't be mandatory.
One last thing. I read on the previous posts things like 'muslim must pray five times a day.' I would simply
like to remind you that catholics should pray even more often... I don't know the English words, but you have
vigiles (the night prayer), primes (the dawn prayer), laudes, tierce, sexte (noon), none, vepres, and complies (before
going to bed)... Now, it's been quite a long time since catholics gave up on them, except maybe for monks and some
extremely religious communities. But please, don't go saying that praying is only a muslim matter...
Oh, and Fye, for your questions:
1) God only knows ;)
2) if my memory is good K. Jaspers, a German, said that God (or whoever you want) had given the humans freedom and the
tools to try understanding how things worked, but it was up to the human beings to use them... and to use them
correctly...
